


The Symphony Hits a Sour Note

by blu_dreaming_skies



Series: Orpheus Lives On [1]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dream Team SMP Spoilers, Gen, Introspection, Manberg-Pogtopia War on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), Suicidal Thoughts, Wilbur Soot Lives, philza is wilbur's dad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:15:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29223813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blu_dreaming_skies/pseuds/blu_dreaming_skies
Summary: A short story exploring what might've happened if someone else blew up L'Manburg on the 16th.
Relationships: Wilbur Soot & Philza
Series: Orpheus Lives On [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2145678
Kudos: 21





	The Symphony Hits a Sour Note

Wilbur stares at the button.

Taps his fingers on it, his breath unsteady.

"What are you doing?"

Phil's voice crackles through his broken communicator. The rush of shame and shock clogs his throat and makes his eyes water. He takes a step back.

"I'm not- I- I wasn't doing anything, we just, we just made Tubbo president- and we won! We won the war, Schlatt's gone, Schlatt's gone, Phil, so it's um..." He stumbles over the empty excuse. The words mean nothing to him, and he doesn't believe them. Sweat beats on his forehead. An uneasy chuckle tumbles past his lips.

Phil's skeptical humming might be funny in another context. "So, you are, where exactly now?"

Wilbur doesn't want to answer.

"In... L'Manburg... sort of, the area- you wouldn't know, I don't think you've been here, but it's the area _around_ L'Manburg- it's complicated- it's geography. Geography and that, you know!" He babbles on, wringing his hands, rubbing his neck. "It's, it's... geography and stu-"

He hears footsteps, twists to face them, and Philza is in the doorway.

There's a stalemate of silence. Phil is crossing his arms with a scolding, distant look, warm in that cold way his father always was.

"Mhm. Yeah. In L'Manburg, you said."

Wilbur curls his hands in the fabric of his coat. "But- but this _is_ L'Manburg..." He trails off at Phil's stony expression. Not getting away with anything this time, eh? "Okay. I will admit... do you know what this button is?"

Phil finally breaks eye contact to glance at the button, then back to Wil. His eyebrows furrow. "Uh-huh. I do."

"Have you heard the- the song on the walls, before?" Wilbur's voice is hesitant, strained. "I was just saying that there _was_ a special place where men could go, but it's- it's not there anymore. You know, it's not..." The hopelessness and regret drip out, calm and methodical, as his fingertips graze the manic etchings in the stone. The vulnerability makes his stomach lurch.

Philza puts a hand on his shoulder, reassures him, "It is there. You've just won it back, Wil."

Wilbur's blood boils.

He screams, outraged and despairing and faithless. " _Phil, I am always so close to pressing this button, Phil!_ I have been, I have been here, seven or eight times I have been here. Seven or eight times." He sighs, shaking. He is so, so angry. So, so _tired_.

Wilbur can hear fireworks from outside the button room. Another celebration that has devolved into a massacre. All of them, so vibrant and furious and fighting and dying in the name of a lie. If the battle ends too soon or if someone manages to slip away... "Oh, they're gonna come in..." He grumbles and blocks off the entrance with blackstone. Philza doesn't stop him.

"Phil, I've been here so many times... they're fighting! They're fighting!" He gestures as if to say, _look at them all, how pointless it is now, how quickly good intentions are poisoned and corrupted and blood is spilled for no reason._

"And you want to just blow it all up."

And Phil's missed his point entirely, hasn't he? He puts a hand on his head and pulls him into a hug. Wilbur closes his eyes for just a moment. Lets himself wallow in the fall and the misery and the self-pity.

Not very eloquent, is it? Not very honorable, not like the strong, noble general and president his friends and men know him to be- crying into his father's shirt.

"Yeah, I do, I do... I..." He sucks in a breath. This is the only thing he can do. The only thing he can want, at this point. And he _does_ want it- his chest is sore with aching for it, fingers eagerly twitching, the explosions already ringing in his mind.

He can already smell the smoke; see the rubble and the crater and the ash clouding the sky.

"You fought so hard to get this- this land back."

Phil only knows what Wilbur's written to him in letters, what he's managed to patch together through stackity transmissions from the other side of the world. If he really understood, he wouldn't be here, trying to stop him.

Wil has done all of this for L'Manburg. _His_ L'Manburg. That special place, where men could go and emancipate... he will be with her until their end, an end by his own hand. Their fates have been sealed for quite a while.

Perhaps that's selfish of him. But now, he just can't find it within himself to care.

"I don't even know if it works anymore, Phil, I don't even know if the button works." Imagine all this just for nothing. _Again_. It would be funny, in a sick kind of way. Anticlimactic at worst. "I could-" His numbness fizzes out as a buzzing spark takes its place, a curiosity more than a desperation pulling at the corner of his mouth. "I could press it, and it might..."

Phil laughs, tension and fear carved into every wrinkle on his face. "You- you really want to take that risk?"

Wilbur chuckles along. Pulls away, turns away, steps away.

Still with a weak smile on his lips, he stares at the button. Taps his fingers on it, his breath steady.

"There was a saying, Phil... by a traitor..."

Here it is. He grins now, cheeks messy with tears and dirt and blood. His mouth tastes like salt and iron. He knows this is his end. He knows that Eret was right.

This country, these wars, the souls of these people united in a pipe dream... was-

"Wil, do you hear that?"

Wilbur almost groans. He's _right here_ , it's _over!_

He hears hissing from outside the button room. Maybe he just tilts his head in confusion or disbelief, maybe he narrows his eyes at his hand on the button as if the appendage pressed it prematurely entirely of its own will, maybe his heart stops.

" _Wil!_ "

He hears hissing, swivels around to take it in, and Philza is grabbing his hood and yanking him away from the wall.

His chest is sore with aching. His fingers twitch. The explosions ring in his ears.

His heart stops.

_It wasn't him._

The detonation devours half the room but Wilbur's safe behind the soft shield of his father's grey wings. He watches as feathers are burned and eaten away by the blast.

"It wasn't me."

Phil squeezes him tight, "I know it wasn't, son, I know."

Phil doesn't understand, just like he's never understood.

It wasn't _him_.

It wasn't him.

It wasn't him.

**Author's Note:**

> This is an experiment with an AU concept I had that my friend liked. It will probably be the first part in a series.


End file.
